With corporate funding of research, “there’s no scientist who comes out of this unscathed.”

EXETER, England — The bee findings were not what Syngenta expected to hear.

The pesticide giant had commissioned James Cresswell, an expert in flowers and bees at the University of Exeter in England, to study why many of the world’s bee colonies were dying. Companies like Syngenta have long blamed a tiny bug called a varroa mite, rather than their own pesticides, for the bee decline.

Scientists have identified major molecular differences between a GMO corn and its non-GMO parent.

A unique new study published on December 19 in the scientific journal Nature has used molecular profiles to reveal major differences in composition between a GMO corn and its non-GMO parent. These findings question industry and regulatory position of “substantial equivalence” and have serious safety implications.

The world’s first GMO apple is hitting the U.S. market next month, but it’s not a Washington apple. The Arctic Apple is produced by Canada’s Okanagan Specialty Fruits and its fancy GMO magic trick is that it will not turn brown.

“Specifically what’s done with that apple is they’ve turned off that browning gene,” said Todd Fryhover, president of the Washington Apple Commission. “There’s nothing introduced into this particular apple to make it Frankenapple.”

MEXICO CITY • A ban on planting genetically modified corn in Mexico is likely to continue for years as a slow-moving legal battle grinds on, said a top executive of Creve Coeur-based seed and agrochemical company Monsanto Co.

Last week, a Mexican court upheld a late 2013 ruling that temporarily halted even pilot plots of GMO corn following a legal challenge over its effects on the environment.

"It's going to take a long while for all the evidence to be presented," Monsanto regional corporate director Laura Tamayo said in an interview. "I think we're talking years."

One of the central issues of our day is how to safely manage the outputs of industrial innovation. Novel products incorporating nanotechnology, biotechnology, rare metals, microwaves, novel chemicals, and more, enter the market on a daily basis. Yet none of these products come with an adequate data set of scientific information. Nor do they come with a clear intellectual framework within which their risks can be placed, as disputes over the precautionary principle show. The majority of products receive no regulatory supervision at all. How will the product be disposed of?

Lymphoma victims seek to question agency ex-pesticide manager
He quit days after report favorable to company was leaked

A former Environmental Protection Agency official may not be able to escape testifying about his alleged role in helping Monsanto Co. suppress inquiries into whether its Roundup weed killer causes cancer.

After more than a decade of unsuccessful efforts to eradicate the genetically modified grass it created and allowed to escape, lawn and garden giant Scotts Miracle-Gro now wants to step back and shift the burden to Oregonians and Idahoans.

The federal government is letting that happen by relinquishing its oversight, even as an unlikely coalition of farmers, seed dealers, environmentalists, scientists and regulators cries foul.

A study of GMO cotton varieties shows they disrupt an important beneficial soil fungus, writes Eva Sirinathsinghji, apparently due to the Bt insecticide they are engineered to express. Disruption caused by the transgenic cotton to mycorrhizal fungi, and the wider soil ecosystem, may underlie the low yields and poor pest resistance now endemic among Bt GM crops.

New ruling says federal law does not prohibit states and counties from passing local laws to regulate and ban commercially-grown GM crops

EXCERPT: The court [declared]: "The regulation of commercialized crops, both of GE and traditional varieties, remains within the authority of state and local governments." At the same time, however, the court ruled that under Hawai'i law, counties and municipalities do not have the authority to regulate GE crops (as some in other states do), and that Hawai'i state law places such authority in the hands of the State alone.
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Coming after frequent reports of the growing resistance of pests to the Bt insecticidal toxin engineered into GM Bt crops, this article is further proof that claims of reduced pesticide spraying due to Bt crop adoption are ludicrously out-of-date.
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Application techniques affect efficacy of crop chemistries